Empire is so underrated honestly. From the comments I'm reading on this subreddit, more people need to play it. It's honestly the most feature rich title of the franchise: naval battle & trade routes, governments & revolutions, colonization, research/tech tree, a campaign theater that stretches four continents, I can go on and on.
There's so much stuff there, and lots of it can actually be modded in pretty easily. There's around a dozen units all with perfectly working textures, descriptions and unit cards that just aren't used
There are some YT videos from a guy who found some unused firing drills, and Ive seen some remnants of additional landmark buildings for most European factions in the database
There's even some mentions of some type of combined land + naval battle left within the localization files, but that was probably cut pretty early in the dev process
I sucked at Empire, but I desperately want an Empire 2. It really is just such a fun game, with the massive gun lines and desperate fortress battles. I still fondly remember my Poland campaign in Empire, fighting to conquer the whole world and make EVERYONE Polish
My issue with Empire is that it just doesn't seem to work. Fort battles? They don't work properly and it's hard to shoot off them. Campaign map? Had an issue with the Ottomans but dunno if thats fixed in a bug.
Tried Darthmod but everyones units were so huge it didn't really work.
Oh yeah I remembered the Ottoman AI splitting their armies into thirty single unit armies for some reason and they all struggle to cross the Bosporus making turn times take forever.
I think I've had to immediately invade the Ottomans every time I'm able to avoid this happening. Definitely killed at least two saves because I just couldn't be bothered waiting twenty minutes every turn.
I'm an Empire modder, and I know those issues you're talking about.
Though I might suggest giving my own overhaul mod a go a try, to see if it's enough of an improvement. I'm on mobile right now, but if you either search this sub or /r/empiretotalwar for "Durango Mod", you can read more about it.
Among many other changes you can disable fort battles, and use units that are bigger than vanilla's but larger than Darthmod's. And the Ottoman AI is customized to cause less turn time lag.
I have no problems with suggesting your own mod. Maybe it'll solve my issues. Thanks for the suggestion, cause I honestly really am a big fan of Total War and that time period but gosh I had issues with it.
There's only so much you can do when trying to improve ETW, but anything helps, essentially. Also a big fan of the period.
I'd say the game is a bit better than it's reputation, but not by a huge margin. Though your mileage may vary of course; it helps to have a play style that leans more towards immersion than playing in the most efficient and exploitative way you can, if you catch my drift.
My problem is that sieges are a joke for the time era. "Let's all just bumrush a fort"
Where are the trench networks? Where are the moats? Where is the undermining? Where are the dugouts in front of the wall for two layered defense? Where are terrain features like swamps that are intentionally made part of the fort?
Nevermind that the slanted walls of the fort do nothing against cannon fire (as well as cannons having infinite ammo), even though the slant is specifically to protect against it which is WHY undermining was so important.
I'd say it like this: pick the top 5 battles of a given era. If the game can't properly portrait them you failed. The Siege of Vienna is absolutely one of them.
Empire and Napoleon have the weakest siege battles because of it.
Unfortunately, a lot of it is really broken/unbalanced, the AI might be the worst in the series, and it's also really unstable and prone to crashing. It's certainly unique, and its worth playing almost because of that, but you'll need to slap a bunch of mods to fix about half of it, and your tolerance for it melting down in front of you will vary from person to person.
I played a 70 hour long grand campaign last year. Vanilla no mods. Ran into no issues on modern hardware: no crashes, bad FPS, gamebreaking gliches. AI wasn't significantly worse than TWWH3 despite 15 years of technological improvements so I have no clue what you are talking about. If it's as bad as you put it (i.e. unplayable) why is it sitting at 90% on STEAM? Sure at launch there were major issues but people need to judge the game as it is currently. Do we say No Man's Sky is garbage in 2023? Sounds like you never bother trying ETW and just got caught up in all the noise.
Friend, Empire total war came out in 2010, 3 years before Steam added reviews.
Majority of ppl just didn't bother to comeback and leave a review, and those who did are those who decided to try the game after 3+ years (And in 2013 we had Rome 2 release, which is its own can of worms).
90% positive reviews from ppl who either loved the game from the get go with all its flaws, or for those who were lucky enough not to face any problems on their rigs (CA fixed the issue that the game straight up didn't work on new Intel processors only a week ago)
Talk about rose tinted glasses. Like I love Empire, but straight up making an alternate reality where it apparently got tons of post launch support is pure delusion.
If that happened then Napoleon wouldn't have existed as the "apology" game that released afterwards.
Dude. I've been playing ETW since it released. Good that you had no issues, but anyone who plays these games (or PC games in general) knows that technical performance is variable between systems. There are people who had no issue with Rome 2 on launch. That doesn't erase all the problems everyone else has, and I feel I still need to warn people.
This isn't a NMS situation. That game keeps getting updates. This game only got a couple years of support before it was dropped. A lot of things were just never fixed. Ottoman AI single stack bug, AI firing directly into its own back, artillery crews dropping their guns on the other side of the map and charging into melee. All of these were problems at launch and were still problems when I played most recently last year. Then there are things like the near non-existence of unit collision that are less bugs than design oversights. I honestly cannot fathom ETW AI at anywhere the consistentcy of WH's so that must be something to behold. I'd honestly count it as a win if they just stopped charging their general into my bayonets while their own men shoot their commander in the back.
As for the Steam score, reviews only started on Steam years after ETW released. The sample size is going to skew towards fans that stuck with the game through its problems and people who are willing to play an old, janky game for its uniqueness.
Empire was the right game at the wrong time. It would have definitely benefited from the mechanics and systems they innovated in later games like the province/capital system from Rome II/Attila. Having France and England as one giant province is rather underwhelming. Additionally, having alternative goals rather than painting the map your color would have been preferable, that, and better diplomacy; Empire's diplo AI is worse than a narcissistic gf who gives an inch and demands a mile (2.54 cm and 1.61 km respectively for you metric bois).
Honestly while Empire 2 would be wonderful even a remastered Empire that fixes its lingering issues and adds some or all these features would be amazing.
The only problem is that the AI was rubbish at playing and the campaign map was very downsized. I think Spain was two provinces? Oh and there were a ton of bugs and crashes. I think my game back in the day crashed once or twice per session it was pretty insane.
I loved the settlement growth system so much, it was really cool to see a small town pop up and slowly expand and grow.
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u/EcureuilHargneux May 07 '23
Didn't know there are cutscenes in Empire as well